We’re proud of our Baptist history and heritage, but we’re also proud of our diversity. At First Baptist you will find a group of people coming from a variety of different church backgrounds and denominations who have found a home at the “top of Poplar.” And while our congregation comes from all over middle Georgia, we are a downtown church and see it is our mission to be the presence of Christ to our InTown and College Hill communities here in Macon.

Nurture. Love. Serve. ALL.

These are the four operative words from our church vision statement that we affirmed last year at the close of our Write the Vision process. The statement in its entirety is :

The First Baptist Church of Christ at Macon nurtures authentic faith and belonging, loves and serves courageously, and affirms the image of God in all people.

I've been so pleased to see the ways we've already started to internalize this vision statement. I'm told that it came up repeatedly in our Church Retreat some weeks ago, with the children incorporating it into their arts and crafts. We also made a point of using it as the call to worship in our Founders' Day worship earlier this month. Of course, it should come as no surprise that the congregation has taken to this statement, after all, it is the well-refined product of a year-long period of congregational discernment!

During our full and productive Church Council and Deacons meeting last month, our church leadership affirmed the use of these four words as a kind of “tag line” to help communicate who we are as a congregation.

The visioning process revealed that we have a clear sense of identity and feel that we occupy a unique space in the spiritual fabric of our community, but do not always communicate this effectively to those on the outside. The “Telling Our Story” task force was charged with coming up with a plan of action to help us to just that: tell our story. Read below for their full report, and be on the lookout for these new ways we will seek to spread the word of all that God is doing through us here at FBCX.

It’s a beautiful and compelling vision of who we are. Let’s use it! We hope this shorthand version of our vision statement will both refer people to the longer vision and core values and become a “jumping off place” to talk about our church both with one another and with the community.

Objective 1: Position FBCX as a moderate, inclusive church in our communications

Re-work the Landing page to place “Cooperative Baptist” and “Nurture. Love. Serve. ALL.” above the fold

Objective 2: Improve existing event marketing

Our church has great programs, many of which aren’t well-publicized to people outside the church.

Goals

Task the Publicity Servant Team to work with Julie on advance marketing events. Use social media and website to promote events. Work to involve members with promotion on social media (like 2016 Fall Festival) Use existing Publicity guidelines.

Ensure marketing materials include First Baptist Church logo along with “Nurture. Love. Serve. ALL.”

Identify volunteer and resource needs on the Publicity Servant Team

Objective 3: Encourage and Empower Laypeople to talk about FBCX with friends and neighbors

Some of our church members have difficulty articulating what makes FBCX special

Goals

Publicity Servant Team follow up with Sunday School classes to discuss the “elevator pitch” based on “Nurture. Love. Serve. ALL.”

Use selected members to produce a 2-5 minute video for website, YouTube, and social media

Shaun Kell has volunteered to work on this project using existing budget and contacts with Mercer and Middle Ga State.

Objective 4: Stream Audio and Video on the web

Most people find church on the web, but our services and special events aren’t streaming on the web.

Goals

Ask Audiovisual Servant Team to Develop a list of needed equipment to:

Quickly and easily put video of services and special events on the FBCX web page and into video podcast form

Quickly and easily put audio of services and special events on the web

Explore feasibility of put podcast on iTunes or other podcast apps

Evaluate memory needs for website. Can we put these things up without spending more money on web hosting? How much more do we need?

Identify a volunteer or team who can update the website with video and audio weekly

Get ministers to make a 30 second blurb about the church to append to video and audio streams.